What is this game?Star Wars: The Old Republic is the first MMORPG by Bioware and the first MMORPG to make storytelling the central focus of the game, rather than being just another added feature. Anyone who is a fan of the Star Wars universe or Bioware games in general will want to play this.

Why should I play?This is the first MMORPG from a western studio since World of Warcraft that is backed with a budget large enough to create a quality product. Electronic Arts and LucasArts has spared no expense in making this the largest video game project ever undertaken. The scope of the game is incredible: not content from just making a fully realized Star Wars universe and delivering the content you expect from MMORPGs, Bioware is also delivering a comprehensive story as well. It is true that story and even in-game cutscenes have been done in MMORPGs before (Final Fantasy XI as a prime example), but none have been even close to what is being done here. All dialogue is spoken, and there is more voice acting in this game at launch than there is from every previous Bioware game ever created, combined. Each of the eight classes in the game has its own unique Mass Effect styled storyline with branching dialogue trees and even romance arcs. All of these storylines in the game can be played completely solo as if you were enjoying a single player game. For those that care about the multiplayer aspect, there will be lots of content to satiate those desires as well. That is where guilds can be handy.

What's the point of a guild?Guilds are a way to keep like-minded players together and provides a means to easily communicate with one another and potentially group together to enjoy the multiplayer aspects of this game. There are two guilds for the RPGFan community. REUNION is run by Tenchi-no-Ryu whom is representing the Republic side. Tea Earl Grey Hot is run by yours truly, the resident miscreant appropriately aligned with the Sith side. We're all playing on Player versus Environment servers so as to avoid all the annoying crap that comes from Player versus Player servers with high level players killing low level players nonstop. If you're interested in signing up for one of the two guilds, just say so and we can arrange a way to meet up in game.

What server are you guys playing on?We are on the server "Mind Trick", a Player versus Environment (PvE) server, eastern time.

What the hell, im in. I will probably end up playing the good guys most of the time..and I may need to cancel my pre order if money is to tight (I Pre ordered the CE) but I can make a sith for funsies.

Logged

-Give a man a fire, and hes warm for a day. Light a man on fire, and hes warm for the rest of his life.-

Another person should start up a Republic guild so both sides are covered. Since each class has its own storyline, I'll inevitably end up playing every class at least once. I can't start up a second guild.

Hey that's a cool idea. I'm gonna have so many characters on different servers due to RL friends playing on one server and MMO buddies playing on another, but one more can't hurt =D I've already used my account to join a guild through the site, but I'll definitely join up at launch.

Got the Republic Guild going. Not alot of people on as of yet. Basically mobilizing people from FFXI Solaris and WoW Solaris as well - see where we can go from here. I just got into the beta for this weekend too - wewt!

Weird, fixed it. Wonder if it was related to all the goofy maintenance issues they had.

I'll also be playing this weekend. This looks like their stress test, so I'm expecting Friday evening to go badly.

On yet another note, probably a good idea to try to get both guilds on the same server. As it turns out, they are not faction restricted and you get eight character slots. I'll be making one of every character since I intend to get the full storyline.

An addendum... the reason why it's a good idea to sign up for one of these two guilds is that you won't have to worry about trying to be on the same server and then try to get into the guild, as the game will handle that part for you immediately after creating each character.

Added RPGFan as an adversary. Might not be a match since I chose a regular PVE server. RPing with Star Wars nerds gives me hives. Got seven so far pre-ordered. Have about 5-6 more who haven't pre-ordered yet but plan to play. Friday is going to be a clusterfuck - but at least Skyrim can fill the times when the servers crash and burn.

Updated the first post with some basic information. I'll add to it later, probably after I've gotten lots of hands-on time with it this weekend. Sith empire guild has four members as of now but needs one more person that has preordered the game for it to meet requirements to transfer to the game automatically.